The Microsoft Storage Solution team at HPE gazed even deeper into their crystal balls and shared a wide-ranging list of technology, business, and related predictions for the coming year.
-By Mike Harding, HPE Storage
Last year, our team had some fun with a top 10 predictions list and we actually did pretty well. So this year we sat down and 
-
Azure tops AWS – Microsoft continues to drive their software installed base to Azure. Despite exciting recent updates like SQL Server 2022 which is a boon to happy on-prem customers, we will still see astounding growth of the Azure cloud business. Microsoft Cloud revenues should already be passing $100B which would seem to top AWS. Then add another maybe $60B worth of annualized installed base software lifting and shifting to SaaS, and we should see a pronounced crossover sooner than expected.
-
Multi-cloud surpasses hybrid cloud – Connecting data centers to hyperscalers via hybrid cloud tech such as Azure Stack Hub and Outpost have become all the vogue, but it’s since been revealed as a shifty way to trap apps and data into the perpetual billing model of a single vendor’s cloud – without lasting benefits to the customer. Instead expect a host of new and maturing multi-cloud offerings with valuable benefits in data and app mobility and tiering. These offerings will bridge app siloes, letting IT manage a mix of on-prem, co-lo, and hyperscaler-based apps while avoiding single cloud lock-in.
-
Chip war heats up – Despite the U.S. pledge of billions of dollars for domestic chip capacity, the reality of new design and fab lead times measured in years will keep the U.S. dependent on non-U.S. processors, which is a positive for global trade and relations. And it’s a non-issue for most enterprises still ingesting the last infrastructure updates, such as HPE Apollo 4200 Gen10 Plus with third-generation Intel Xeon Scalable CPUs for solutions such as Azure Stack HCI.
-
Storage at rest gets restless – Consistently for many years now, only about 10% of data generated is retained, and as the total amount annually generated is expected to exceed 100 zettabytes in 2023, we can expect to see more data storage companies developing, evolving, expanding and acquiring more data-in-motion (e.g. networking) capabilities and offerings, vs. delivering mostly just data storage, management and archiving products.
-
AI innovation jolts a domestic industry – We’ve become familiar with Google maps, Alexa, Roombas, embedded AI in enterprise IT, and the occasional glimpse of a self-driving (though still not yet driverless) vehicle. But we’re due for some new “killer app” (and I’m not talking about kamikaze drones, I hope) finding its way into one or more major U.S. industries. With supply chain and geo-political strains not yet completely behind us, the stage is set for a significant disruption to a large, legacy business, due to a game-changing intelligent automation in 2023.
-
Hybrid work is here to stay – Whether it was the social isolation, threats from the boss, or the tug of “cake day,” workers young and old are returning to their cube farms, but only for two-to-three days per week. Whereas work-from-home may have improved some productivity, it seems to have been at the expense of innovation. Hoteling cubes, storage cubies, more transient/ social space become the norm. And companies that just patched their IT infrastructure during the pandemic to support remote workers will now be investing in permanent infrastructure such as cloud-based office apps, VDI, end-point security, and related networking upgrades.
-
Teams meta-disrupted – Microsoft Teams has seen its usage vault through the pandemic to what we’re told is now 270M users, despite significant usability design challenges. Yet we know more usable tools are possible, such as Slack. There’s a pent-up supply of metaverse-enabling tech (AR, VR, gesture, voice, wearables, and so on) and those related vendors are itching to find a use case. Even as an add-on, there’s the opportunity for someone to create the “Apple watch” of desktop video collaboration.
-
IT mega deal – There have been a lot of “tuck-in” acquisitions done by IT leaders over the past few years, but this current wave of recession fears and stock dips will be enough to make the numbers work for at least one enterprise IT mega deal in 2023. Look for a marriage of convenience between a couple companies who have not been able to evolve their biz models to be sufficiently cloud-computing centric.
-
Edge app action – As more apps and data capacity move to the edge (e.g. IoT devices, point-of-sale/service systems, telco network locations, etc.), we can expect at least one significant hack in the coming year that will proliferate across a compromised edge and significantly impact a regional or maybe even global user base. Publicity of this breach will in turn spur on another burst of data security and protection investment.
-
Data mining becomes a resource biz – We’ve heard the expression that “data is the new oil," but we have yet to see a major conglomerate in the space. Data mining, list brokers and related exchanges are out there, but they are still relatively small, and there haven’t been any rapacious moves to roll-up competitors, vertically integrate, or any other aggressive actions to build a dominant, data monopoly. But given the growing value of data, esp. to train hungry ML apps, I’m expecting we’ll see an ambitious actor make a move in 2023.
Who knows what the future holds, but you don’t have to wonder how to lower costs and achieve your Microsoft data infrastructure objectives. Check out our solution page at HPE.com/Storage/Microsoft. Or get a daily update on Microsoft Storage solutions from HPE by tracking us on Twitter at #HPEMSData or @mhardi01.
Meet Storage Experts blogger Mike Harding, HPE Storage
Storage Experts
Hewlett Packard Enterprise
twitter.com/HPE_Storage
linkedin.com/showcase/hpestorage/
hpe.com/storage
StorageExperts
Our team of Hewlett Packard Enterprise storage experts helps you to dive deep into relevant infrastructure topics.
